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Also see:
Government shutdown; undocumented laborers; low
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Undated:
Wage violations A common remedy for wage violations is an order that the
employer make up the difference between what the employee was paid and the
amount he or she should have been paid. The amount of this sum is often referred
to as "back pay." Among other Department of Labor programs, back wages may be
ordered in cases under the Fair Labor
Standards Act (FLSA) on the various federal contract labor statutes.
Listed below are methods which the FLSA provides for recovering unpaid minimum
and/or overtime wages.
--The Wage and Hour Division may
supervise payment of back wages.
--The Secretary of Labor may bring suit for back wages and an equal amount as
liquidated damages.
--An employee may file a private suit for back pay and an equal amount as
liquidated damages, plus attorney's fees and court costs.
--The Secretary of Labor may obtain an injunction to restrain any person from
violating the FLSA, including the unlawful withholding of proper minimum wage
and overtime pay.
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/wages/backpay
Undated:
Wage and Hour Division ... Our Mission is Clear
"To promote and achieve compliance with labor standards to protect and enhance
the welfare of the nation’s workforce"
We’re here to help workers and employers, and we’re making progress toward our
goals every day. Some examples…
WHD continues to provide around the clock service to both employers and
employees via the internet. In FY 2018, our website was viewed nearly 30 million
times.
WHD has long recognized that the vast majority of employers want to play by the
rules. We proudly engage in a robust outreach and education program that
continues to educate employers and workers alike to promote compliance. https://www.dol.gov/whd/data/
The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD) is responsible for
administering and enforcing some of the nation's most important worker
protection laws. WHD is committed to ensuring that workers in this country are
paid properly and for all the hours they work, regardless of immigration status.
Undated: "Wage
push inflation" is a general increase in the cost of goods that is
preceded by and results from an increase in wages. To maintain corporate
profits after an increase in wages, employers must increase the prices
they charge for the goods and services they provide.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/wage-push-inflation.asp
November 11:Donald J. Trump on Wednesday
morning repeated a statement he made the night before in the Republican
presidential debate: that wages are “too high” in the United States, an
argument he made to explain his opposition to raising the minimum wage.
November 12: Trump: I never said wages are too high
...
“I didn’t say that ... we were talking about the
minimum wage, and they said ‘should we increase the minimum wage?’ And I’m
saying that if we’re going to compete with other countries we can’t do that
because the wages would be too high,” Trump said after host Bret Baier asked him
about his comments.
“I was referring to the minimum wage,” Trump continued.
The business mogul said that people say they want to increase the minimum wage
because it sounds good politically and even though it’s hard for him to say, he
had to stand strong on not raising the minimum wage because “our country is
losing businesses.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/donald-trump-wages-215812
April 18:Buy American and Hire
American: Putting American Workers First
On April 18, 2017, President Trump signed the
Buy American and Hire American Executive Order, which seeks to create higher
wages and employment rates for U.S. workers and to protect their economic
interests by rigorously enforcing and administering our immigration laws. It
also directs DHS, in coordination with other agencies, to advance policies to
help ensure H-1B visas are awarded to the most-skilled or highest-paid
beneficiaries.
USCIS is working on a combination of rulemaking, policy memoranda, and
operational changes to implement the Buy American and Hire American Executive
Order. We are creating and carrying out these initiatives to protect the
economic interests of U.S. workers and prevent fraud and abuse within the
immigration system.
https://www.uscis.gov/legal-resources/buy-american-hire-american-putting-american-workers-first
August 31: Ivanka Trump says the equal-pay initiative her father blocked
wouldn't have worked — but they don't have a better solution ... Much is assumed about the pay
gap, but high-quality data is hard to come by.
That was set to change in 2018, when an Obama-era rule requiring businesses to
collect salary data sorted by employees' gender, race, and ethnicity was
supposed to go into effect.
October 31: Trump's Labor Department aims to
make tip-pooling legal again
The law Obama’s administration created ruled that employees own their tips, not
the restaurant, and that restaurants are not allowed to pool tips or give them
to non-tipped employees. The rules applied to all levels of wage-earning
servers.
December 4: Trump rolling back Obama rule on
pooling restaurant tips ... The Labor Department announced plans Monday to issue
a proposed rule to change the Fair Labor Standards Act regulation and allow
employers to pool the tips of workers who make full minimum wage and share them
with non-tipped workers.
The National Restaurant Association has been fighting hard for the rule change
to eliminate what it has said is a pay disparity between servers in the front of
the house and staff in the kitchen.
January 2: As the financial leader in North
Dakota and west central Minnesota, we [Gate City Bank] are committed to
providing a better way of life.
We are grateful to all of our employees for everything they to do make a
difference for our customers and communities. As
a thank you for our employees' hard work and dedication, we will be providing
our 538 employees with $1,000 each, giving back over $625,000. Every
employee will be hand-delivered a check for a net amount of $1,000 on January
15th. Executive Leadership, Regional Leaders, Office Managers and Department
Managers are not eligible. This is above and beyond general compensation.
https://www.gatecitybank.com/tax-reduction-reinvestment/
January 5: In Trump's first year, stocks
soar for rich, but wages stay flat
American wages rose a sluggish 2.5 percent last year, according to a Labor
Department report released Friday morning. That's the same rate of wage growth
as under President
Barack Obama. Historically, wages have grown more than 3.5 percent in a
typical economic upturn, but that hasn't happened in this expansion.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-stocks-wages-workers-20180105-story.html
January 12: How much will the tax cuts raise
your take-home pay?
Take-home pay for a person claiming single status and one withholding allowance,
with gross annual income of $50,000 paid biweekly, would increase by about $55
per pay period, or approximately $1,440 per year. [So, a single person with one
withholding allowance with gross annual income of $25,000 per year would
increase by about $27.50 per pay period or about $13.75 per week, roughly
speaking]
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-much-will-the-tax-cuts-raise-your-take-home-pay/
January 23: These companies announced wage
hikes, bonuses, benefits in afterglow of Trump tax reform ...
Nearly every day another company publicly
announces bonuses, wage increases or other kinds of benefits they’re offering
employees since President Donald Trump signed tax reform into law on Dec. 22.
January 24: Starbucks Employees Are Getting
a Pay Raise
Starbucks becomes the latest U.S. company to pledge a portion of its federal
tax-cut windfall to employees, which the coffee giant calls “partners.”
Apple Inc. said earlier this month that it’s giving most of its staff a
$2,500 bonus.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., meanwhile, plans to hike its starting wage to $11 an
hour and give out $400 million in one-time bonuses.
http://time.com/money/5116102/starbucks-employees-raises-benefits/
January 24:Walmart Fires Thousands of Sam
Club Employees Nationally & Leaves Out Key Facts About So-Called Wage Changes
January 26: The latest big names to say they
will share some of the financial benefits from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act with
workers are package delivery giant FedEx and Honeywell, an industrial company.
On Friday, FedEx said it was boosting employee compensation by $200 million,
two-thirds going to wage increases for hourly workers and the rest to
performance-based incentive plans. Honeywell said it would boost its 401(k)
match.
These announcements follow similar moves by employers such as Home Depot,
Walmart and Walt Disney.
January 29:
Just a few weeks into Republicans’ delivery of hefty federal tax cuts for
businesses, the impacts keep piling up for employees.
Most of it looks quite nice, as hundreds of thousands of Home Depot hourly
workers are finding out with “one-time
tax reform” bonuses of up to $1,000. [? See other articles above, especially
regarding Home Depot exceptions]
January 30: Trump took credit for workers
getting higher wages under his tenure.
"After years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages," he said
Tuesday.
Last year, wages grew an average of 2.6% -- the same rate as 2016. And it's
still considered weak improvement: The Federal Reserve hopes to see wages
increase about 3.5% annually.
Wage growth has accelerated somewhat over the past two years. It averaged a
paltry 2.2% since October 2010, even though the economy has added jobs every
month.
The relative lack of wage growth is a big reason many Americans still feel left
out of the recovery from the Great Recession.
January 31: Pay gains during Trump's first
year in office best since the Great Recession
Workers looking for fatter paychecks had their best year in 2017 since before
the financial crisis, according to a government report Wednesday.
The Employment Cost Index, a measure of salary and benefit costs, registered a
2.6 percent gain for the full year, tied for the best since 2007, the Bureau of
Labor Statistics reported.
President Donald Trump's first
full year in office saw gains that easily outdistanced any year for his
predecessor, Barack Obama, whose best showing was the 2.2 percent increases in
2016 and 2014. Six of Obama's eight years in office saw gains of 2 percent or
less.
February 1: Congratulations On Your $1,000
GOP Tax Reform Bonus!*
*If you have 20 years on the job, that is.
If you listen to Republican leaders these days,
you’d think workers all over America were rolling around in big fat bonuses
thanks to the GOP tax plan. But in a lot of cases, these one-time payouts aren’t
nearly as generous as employers, politicians and even the news media are making
them out to be.
February 1: Dohrn
Transfer, with its corporate headquarters for trucking and a company warehouse
in Rock Island, has mailed out $1,000 bonuses to all of its approximately 1,200
employees in six Midwest states.
Employees began receiving the checks in the mail Monday.
“They were pretty excited,” Ms. Dohrn said. “One thousand dollars goes a long
way with hard-working people. It’s exciting to hear what they are doing with it,
and that they feel appreciated.
The money in bonuses is in addition to the increases that the company will be
doing for employees in 2018, she said.
February 2: ‘Pooled tips’ could enrich
employers, but hurt these workers the most ... The Department of Labor scrubbed
an analysis showing a negative impact on workers, the Economic Policy Institute
said
Changes proposed by the Department of Labor on Dec. 5 would allow employers to
legally pocket tips that servers earn at restaurants. The change, which would
repeal part of a 2011 ruling that said employers could not pocket their workers’
tips, is meant to level a growing disparity between what tipped employees like
servers earn compared with back-of-house employees like cooks. After the
changes, employers could take all tips earned by servers and redistribute them
to workers that are not tipped.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps-decision-to-allow-tip-pooling-could-cost-workers-6-billion-2017-12-13
February 2: The U.S. economy added 200,000
jobs in January, and wages grew at the fastest pace in eight years.
Wages were up 2.9% compared with a year earlier, the best pace since June 2009.
Wage growth has been the last major measure to make meaningful progress since
the end of the Great Recession.
One-time bonuses, which many ... companies have given out, are not counted in
the wage growth calculation.
Several states also raised their minimum wage at the start of the year, which
helped overall wages grow. And experts say wages had to rise at some point as
the country kept adding jobs and unemployment stayed low.
February 2: Workers celebrate more money in
paychecks after tax cuts ... “I just checked my paycheck and I have $100 extra
dollars! That money will go to my church and help pay a bill,” Michael Diaz, of
Houston, Texas, tweeted on Friday. “Thank you @tedcruz and @POTUS for the #TaxCuts
$200 extra per month is not crumbs in my house!”
However, those whose checks remained the same shouldn’t fret – employers have
until Feb. 15 to make the changes.
House Speaker Paul Ryan deleted a tweet Saturday touting the GOP tax overhaul
after critics called him out for appearing out of touch with the reality of
low-income individuals' financial situations.
The tweet shared the story of a secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly
surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week ... she said [that] will more than cover
her Costco membership for the year," Ryan tweeted with a link to the full
article.
"Paul Ryan deleted his embarrassing tweet of a blatant admission because he and
Republicans don't want you to know the truth: the #GOPTaxScam is a gift to
corporate America and the top 1% at your expense," Rep. Nancy Pelosi,
D-California, tweeted. "He also doesn't want you to know he got $500.000.00 from
the Koch family."
February 20: Henry Schein Inc., the nation’s
largest distributor of dental products, said Tuesday it would spend about $4
million to pay one-time cash bonuses of $1,000 to some of its U.S. workers in
light of a lower tax rate under the new federal tax law.
The Melville-based distributor of products and equipment to the offices of
dentists, doctors and veterinarians said that the bonuses would go to “certain
designated staff members in the U.S. with one full year of service” as of Jan.
1. About 4,000 workers would receive the bonus, the company said.
The firm employs more than 22,000 people worldwide, about half of those in the
United States ... also reported a fourth quarter net loss related to $140
million in taxes on repatriated foreign earnings, another facet of the new tax
law.
https://www.newsday.com/business/henry-schein-net-loss-1.16881052
February 21: Jim Perkins, former executive
director of the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum and an Army reservist, says military
pay is outpacing the inflation rate and civilians doing the same job, education
and experience as troops are only paid 83 percent to 90 percent what service
members are paid.
A 2013 Center for New American Security (CNAS)
study suggests the same thing.
“One of the largest contributors to the trend of rising military personnel costs
is the growth in cash compensation. Military personnel cash compensation
increased by 52 percent between 2002 and 2010, adjusted for inflation. Over the
past 12 years, pay increases for military personnel have grown much faster than
both inflation and private sector compensation,” the study stated.
Service members are at an even bigger financial advantage because of housing and
food subsidies through basic allowance for housing (BAH) and commissaries.
The study stated the Defense Department could save $25 billion over 10 years if
Congress issued more reasonable pay increases.
April 4: Oklahoma governor compares teachers
to 'a teenage kid that wants a better car'
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed a measure giving teachers a $6,100 pay raise
and then compared their demand for more education funding to "a teenage kid that
wants a better car."
May 25: For CEOs, $11.7 million a year is
just middle of the pack
For the first time, the government required companies to show in their annual
proxy statements just how much more bosses make than the typical employee. The
typical CEO made 164 times the median pay of their employees, according to
Equilar's analysis.
September 18: Wage growth is one of those
instances where just because Trump repeats a statistic a lot doesn’t make it
accurate. Regular readers may remember
Trump earning Four Pinocchios for his claim that “wages are now, for the
first time in many years, rising.”
October 5: The U.S. jobless rate dropped to
3.7 percent in September — the lowest since 1969, though the economy added a
lower-than-expected 134,000 jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said. The
jobless rate fell from August's 3.9 percent.
Average earnings rose 8 cents, to $27.24 per hour last month. But wage growth
slowed, with average hourly earnings up 2.8 percent from a year earlier,
compared with a 2.9 percent increase in August.
October 31: Wages
and salaries jump by 3.1%, highest level in a decade
However the unemployment rate is now at 3.7 percent, the lowest since 1969, and
wage pressures have begun to build. The Federal Reserve has been raising
interest rates in an effort to stave off future inflationary pressures, though
the central bank’s preferred gauge of inflation rose just 2.5 percent in the
third quarter, including a 1.9 percent increase for health benefits.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/31/wages-and-salaries-jump-by-3point1percent-highest-level-in-a-decade.html
December 6: 'This is a disgrace': Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez slams her future colleagues in Congress for employing unpaid
interns and failing to pay staffers a 'living wage'
January 21:Elizabeth Warren, airport employees rally to end
shutdown, wage violations
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren joined frustrated airline workers, union
members and elected leaders at Logan International Airport Monday to rally for
better work conditions and call for an end to the government shutdown she says
lies solely in the hands of President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell.
